Help me understand the negativity

[Wesley Pryce]

In my short time on the boards I have seen some negative comments about Angel season four,particularly the character arc of ms Cordeilla Chase. To be fair I have seen this same criticism not only here but on other sites as well. A lot of people seem to think her arc was quite unseemly and seem to have very strong emotions regarding the "evil Cordy" storyline. I'm actually a big fan of season four so this is hard for me to understand,just why it has such a low opinion and had such very low yearly ratings. Still,my point in this thread is not to be defensive about Angel season four as a major fan,but rather to try to understand just what it is that some fans find so very upsetting about this storyline. I'm not saying its their "best" season,i actually prefer seasons 2,3 and 5. I just don't get why it has received the level of harsh criticism that the fans have given it. To clarify,I'm not writing this to defend season four but to understand very specifically what it is that people don't like about the Cordy arc. I mean other characters have gone evil before(Angel into Angelus,Spike got triggered,Faith turned on Buffy,and Willow went dark/evil). So what exactly is SO different about Cordiella?

Allow me to boil this all down to two questions. 1.) What makes people so upset about the "Cordy" arc to a level of criticism that I don't see or hear for the other characters who have gone evil? (after all she wasn't even in control,she was not actually "evil" herself,much like Angel in Buffy season 2 or triggered Spike in season 7)

2.) Is it just the arc itself or is it that that was Cordy's last season as a main cast member and you didn't like her going out as a villain,to put it another way,would you have cared less about the arc of season four if she had been a main cast member in season five as good ole' Cordy(circa season 3)?

In summation, I just want to understand this because it truly doesn't make sense to me. Admittedly I'm biased deeply,Angel is my favorite television series of all time so I suppose I can't be impartial,but I just don't get all the critical fuss over the "evil Cordy" storyline.

I look forward to all of your insights 🙂

 

[Robb Stark]

To me, there are only two things really "wrong" with S4. Cordy/Jasmine, and Connor. I'll get into Cordy/Jasmine below. With Connor, they took an interesting premise and did absolutely nothing with it. They wrote Connor abysmally. He hardly changes or develops at all over the course of the season, Vincent Kartheiser was not a good actor at the time (seriously, he had one facial expression the entire season. He had one mood the entire season, sulky) and they had no idea where to go with the character. It got so bad that they had to write him out of the show, almost entirely. When you've boxed yourself into a corner with a character so much that you have to concoct a plot point where reality is literally erased in order to "fix" things, that isn't good.

1.) What makes people so upset about the "Cordy" arc to a level of criticism that I don't see or hear for the other characters who have gone evil? (after all she wasn't even in control,she was not actually "evil" herself,much like Angel in Buffy season 2 or triggered Spike in season 7)

The issue for me here is two-fold.

1. First, the story makes no sense whatsoever. None. It was clearly jumbled together on the fly, and to cover that they attempted to say that Jasmine and Skip had been concocting this evil master plan over the course of the entire series, which is so obviously not true that the entire credibility of the arc is eroded. They attempted to essentially retcon the entire continuity and mythology of the show to prop up a weak arc. As a fan, that annoyed, and continues to annoy, me to no end.

2. It's derivative. Evil Cordy is just incredibly redundant. It's a storyline we've seen many, many times before, and it offered virtually nothing new original at all. Joss is a great character writer, but he has his limitations as a storyteller. He doesn't care a lot for his own continuity, and he has several storyline themes he just loves to push. Characters going evil is one of them. As you said, we've already seen "gone bad" angles with Angel, Spike, Willow, Xander, Faith, Anya, Andrew, Lindsey, Fred/Illyria (although that happens in S5, and I liked it [because it was unique]) Wesley, Connor and even Buffy and Gunn to an extent. Why does every character on the show have to go evil? The only times it was done spectacularly well was the Angel/Angelus and Faith arcs. That's it. The other times weren't "bad" per say, but they weren't amazing either. Evil Cordy was a very, very weak storyline to begin with. The big emotional moments they clearly thought were going to strike these big chords with the audience, Cordy sleeping with Connor, Cordy killing Lilah, fell flat, or made viewers roll their eyes. Why would Joss or anyone else think that having the show's primary love interest and female lead having sex with the hero's son be a good idea?

2.) Is it just the arc itself or is it that that was Cordy's last season as a main cast member and you didn't like her going out as a villain,to put it another way,would you have cared less about the arc of season four if she had been a main cast member in season five as good ole' Cordy(circa season 3)?

It's the arc itself, or at least, it is for me. 90 percent of the characters in the Buffyverse have gone bad at one time or another, so that isn't the part that really bothers me. The fact that the arc is illogical to a ridiculous degree and that they treated a beloved character and the series' own continuity like dirt to achieve that middling result is what bothers me.

It's a shame, because the vast majority of S4 is actually really good. The first three quarters of the season are awesome, and there are some wicked episodes.

 

[Aimee]

I guess I just felt that the character had already gone through changes that I didn't like, so when the Powers That Be spat her out and she had amnesia & then she was evil (well, possessed) I just groaned & wished they'd kill her off.
This is going to be an unpopular statement, but I didn't like nice, motherly, champion & love interest for Angel, Cordelia. I know characters change but for some reason I didn't like that whole motherly turn Cordelia took. I liked her season 1 & 2 of Angel. A good combo of shallow with a bit of fight & humour.

I love season 4 for everything else (okay, maybe not Connor, that character was badly written), but I just didn't enjoy Cordy at all in season 4. I wish Jasmine had turned up some other way.

 

[Kurai]

It just came completely out of nowhere about halfway through the series, that's my main problem with it. However, I thought the last 4-5 episodes of the season were decent, and the season had some great moments spread throughout, just the evil Cordy thing came completely out of nowhere and wasn't handled very well. I read somewhere that the plotline was written to accommodate Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy, so that'd probably be why it wasn't that great as they had to find a way to write her pregnancy into the show.

 

[VisionGirl]

There are many, many things I like about season 4. I'm not a season 4 hater by any means. The Beast was awesome, Spin The Bottle is a heck of a lot funnier than Tabula Rasa, great fight scenes, Faith/Willow/Angelus, dark Wesley, Wesley/Lilah, the cool demon world in Peace Out.

But I am not enamored with the Cordy arc. And mainly because I am so freaking pissed off at Joss Whedon for treating Charisma Carpenter the way he did. I really like Whedon, but this is one instance that I hate. Completely sexist and juvenile. Charisma got pregnant, she didn't tell Joss right away (yes, she should have but she had a miscarriage the year before and was understandably reluctant to tell people right away), and he threw a temper tantrum. First he made Cordy possessed by an evil entity, then made her completely insignificant and impotent the rest of the season (by way of a coma), and then fired her. Pretty despicable.

 

[ladydorotea]

First he made Cordy possessed by an evil entity, then made her completely insignificant and impotent the rest of the season (by way of a coma), and then fired her. Pretty despicable.

It is my understanding that the events unfolded in a somewhat different order. In fact, possession by an evil entity was Joss' original plan for Cordelia in S4 from the start.

If you look at his patterns , it actually makes a lot of sense. Angel becomes Angelus was his first 'lucky strike' and after that turned out to be phenomenal success JW just could not stop. Tara was supposed to come back evil , then somehow turn back to be herself again. Fred gets possessed by an evil god that eats her from inside. Willow turns Dark Willow then herself again, in BtVS final (and many say - suckiest) of seasons even ensouled Spike gets sort-of possessed and turns sort-of evil for a while. Even in the comics the pattern continues

Spoiler

( Angel gets possessed by Twilight, Giles (dead body) gets possessed by Eyghon, etc.)

Cordelia ascends - then comes back evil was the original plan that has nothing to do with Charisma's pregnancy. In the original plan Angel was supposed to kill evil Cordelia which is actually far worse a twist than the one we got because of CC's pregnancy. Because she was pregnant they replaced killing of Cordelia with Cordelia gets to sleep with Connor and gives birth to evil entity, then Connor kills it. As for the coma - I think it was more or less 'putting character on a bus', in hopes that they can get her back somehow in later seasons. But because AtS was cancelled by the network - or was in line to be cancelled they did not have time to deal with Cordelia properly and the most they could do was an episode - which is still better than being killed off by Angel as was in the original plan. (Although I am not sure if the original killage was supposed to be permanent or not.)

 

[Kurai]

There are many, many things I like about season 4. I'm not a season 4 hater by any means. The Beast was awesome, Spin The Bottle is a heck of a lot funnier than Tabula Rasa, great fight scenes, Faith/Willow/Angelus, dark Wesley, Wesley/Lilah, the cool demon world in Peace Out.

But I am not enamored with the Cordy arc. And mainly because I am so freaking pissed off at Joss Whedon for treating Charisma Carpenter the way he did. I really like Whedon, but this is one instance that I hate. Completely sexist and juvenile. Charisma got pregnant, she didn't tell Joss right away (yes, she should have but she had a miscarriage the year before and was understandably reluctant to tell people right away), and he threw a temper tantrum. First he made Cordy possessed by an evil entity, then made her completely insignificant and impotent the rest of the season (by way of a coma), and then fired her. Pretty despicable.

Yeah, I liked Season 4, I just wasn't a fan of the Evil Cordelia arc. I really liked the last 4 or 5 episodes of the season

 

[nightshade]

I loved the Faith arc in season 4, Spin the bottle was great too.

The whole evil cordelia and Connor thing though, she was a mother figure to him, then she sleeps with him and has another magical pregnancy

 

[Wesley Pryce]

Interesting insights 🙂 I still don't see whats "so bad" about it,but I'm just weird I guess 😛

 

[Robb Stark]

Interesting insights 🙂 I still don't see whats "so bad" about it,but I'm just weird I guess 😛

I think it's because they attempted to alter the core of the entire show to suit a plot point. They tried to implant the notion that Jasmine had been influencing and corrupting everything every character had ever done, and it completely retconned the continuity that had been established for years. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, although to be fair, it isn't hard for me to just say Skip was lying, which is was I often do.

 

[Lyri]

Because they shoved Cordelia (and Charisma) into a fridge.

To be honest, I see S4 as nothing more than Joss throwing a hissy fit because Charisma messed up his plans.

Yes, maybe Charisma should have informed Joss and the other writers about her pregnancy sooner, but as [MENTION=10354]VisionGirl[/MENTION] said, it's understandable why she wanted to keep it to herself for a little longer than she probably should have. There are MANY things Joss could have come up with that wouldn't have reduced Cordelia's character to an incubator.

Cordelia was one of the strongest female characters on the show, yet she NEVER appears in S4. From the second we see her on the higher plane, she's infected with Jasmine and her decisions from there on out are influenced by Jasmine in order to get Jasmine to this dimension and then she's in a coma. The last we see of Cordelia is when she ascends at the end of S3. Even her appearance in S5 is nothing more than her spirit, her 'recompense' for what Jasmine did to her, for killing her.

I understand that the original idea was for Cordelia to be evil, culminating in an all-out, fight-to-the-death between her and Angel, and that Cordelia was even originally supposed to be possessed, but at the same time, that wasn't even close to what we got and it HURTS that her progressed and her development was halted and shoved aside. She doesn't have anymore character growth past the middle of S3, when her 'demon' powers kick in. She is fridged, because from then on out, everything that happens to her is to further Angel's storyline.

The timeline of S4 also bothers me. Supposedly, it's supposed to take place over a two-week period, but it just never, ever felt like it. Even when I rewatch the DVDs, it still seems longer than it suppose to be. Whether that's because of the sun going out, I don't know, but the timing just seems wrong, off, like they haven't really put much thought into it.

And that's another thing I feel is wrong with S4, it seems rushed, like they're making it up as they go along, but I also feel like the same thing happened with BtVS S7, like Joss just didn't have time for this universe anymore and the other writers just didn't know how to go on without him.

I like certain elements from S4 (Angelus, Lilah, Gwen) but I like even less to make enjoying the overall season impossible.

 

[VisionGirl]

I think it's because they attempted to alter the core of the entire show to suit a plot point. They tried to implant the notion that Jasmine had been influencing and corrupting everything every character had ever done, and it completely retconned the continuity that had been established for years. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, although to be fair, it isn't hard for me to just say Skip was lying, which is was I often do.

And I always like to say that Jasmine her(/his/it?)self is lying. Some people have gone as far as saying that Angel was brought back by Jasmine in Buffy season 3! To which I say bullhockey!! Jasmine thought waaaaay too much of herself IMO.

And I agree with [MENTION=6332]Lyri[/MENTION]- this is a talented team of writers. Really, they couldn't come up with a better storyline for Cordy?! I too tire of the "good characters gone bad" storyline. I don't mind it in moderation (Angelus, Darla- although she was never a "good" character, Anya), but not everybody needs to go evil. It's lazy storytelling.

 

[chasesummers]

Season 4 is pretty neat, I really liked when Faith came around but because of the Cordy thing it was hard to enjoy.

I love Cordelia, her witty and bright personality I missed so much on the fourth.
Sure it wasn't Cordelia, I just wished that they didn't get her at all, I am really? Sleeping with Connor was disgusting, Jasmin used her body which just feels dirty to me and with Connor, even more.

Evil ''Cordy'' for some episodes sure! why not, but we didn't really get anything from Cordelia until ''You're Welcome''.

Season 4 is great, but as a Cordy fan I really hate watching it. I won't mind skipping it.

PS: She gave birth to an African American woman for crying out loud!!! hahaha reallly?!!

 

[Kurai]

I think it's the scenes between her and Conner which irked me the most, it just felt really weird.

 

[Kenimowy]

I loved the idea of evil Cordy. I hated the execution. Most everyone already hit the points that made me dislike this season. Season 4 wasn't a total bust. It had some great episodes, but the major factor wasn't Cordy being evil, or Cordy having amnesia, but the whole love affair with Conner. I felt that was the crossing line of taking a much loved character and completely demolishing her. I get that she is evil and all that, but she didn't just have an affair with anybody, she had one with Angel's son who up until very recently was just a baby that she viewed as her own and changed diapers on. It flirted with a form of incest/pedophilia. Not only this, but it was all to introduce a big bad I just didn't care for. I found the beast to much more interesting by himself. And also, as already mentioned, the whole prospect that everything we have seen was all being manipulated for the sake of the birth of Jasmine just ticked me off. I hate when shows try to pull the this never happened card or nothing you did was your choice.
Kind of a rant, but that's it! It still doesn't change how much I love this show and Buffy. I won't let one season I disagree with ruin the rest of it 🙂

 

[PK Willow]

Because they shoved Cordelia (and Charisma) into a fridge.

To be honest, I see S4 as nothing more than Joss throwing a hissy fit because Charisma messed up his plans.

Yes, maybe Charisma should have informed Joss and the other writers about her pregnancy sooner, but as [MENTION=10354]VisionGirl[/MENTION] said, it's understandable why she wanted to keep it to herself for a little longer than she probably should have. There are MANY things Joss could have come up with that wouldn't have reduced Cordelia's character to an incubator.

Cordelia was one of the strongest female characters on the show, yet she NEVER appears in S4. From the second we see her on the higher plane, she's infected with Jasmine and her decisions from there on out are influenced by Jasmine in order to get Jasmine to this dimension and then she's in a coma. The last we see of Cordelia is when she ascends at the end of S3. Even her appearance in S5 is nothing more than her spirit, her 'recompense' for what Jasmine did to her, for killing her.

Omg yes. S4 had ups and downs for me. I don't hate Jasmine, as she was an interesting villain, but I HATED how she came about. Why couldn't of she came into the show a different way? I really hated that she slept with Connor, it seemed too out of character and it annoyed me so much. I feel like something was missing without Cordy being an active character anymore, a feeling that was there up until she makes an appearance in season 5 to provide closure.

I mean no disrespect to Carpenter, since that seems like the only way to have dealt with her pregnancy. Though, could not they have held the show on hold until her pregnancy was over? I don't know how show business works, though that would have been a nice option.

 

[thetopher]

It's a mixed bag but I actually like Season 4 a lot because it tries to be epic!

-Okay, so it doesn't always pull it off but I'm a sucker for the whole reign of fire, blotting out the sun/eternal night thing.
-Angelus in the cage and the psychological warfare angle leads to a great couple of episodes.
- Vegas episode, okay this isn't really that good, but having Angel talk about his rat pack days was fun.
-Spin The Bottle- better than Tabula Rasa, Alexis Denisof is a comedy god.
-Dark Wesley!
-Faith comes back, redeems herself, is awesome, slaps Conner around.😀
-Am I the only one who likes Willow in Orpheus much more than I like Willow in Saeson 7 Buffy, she just seems more...Willow, plus she kicks ass.
- One of the few decent Gunn-certric episodes 'Players'.

Things I don't like:
Supersymmetry- Everyone acts out of character. Fred (!) turns into a cold-blooded killer.😱
Evil Cordy- this is just so badly done.
One-note Conner- Conner does the same sort of thing every episode, whines, grumbles and annoys me. Except later on, he does get some good scenes but by then its too late for the character.
The Jasmine Arc- I do like Gina Torres, but I don't buy the whole 'feel sympathy for this monster who killed Cordy and eats people because...world peace!' Dumb.

 

[AnthonyCordova]

It's interesting to read other people's comments. I definitely see things differently than other posters. It would be interesting to get their deep reasoning behind their opinions over a cup of coffee or something. It's funny how other smart people can draw completely different conclusions sometimes to your own.

Season 4 wasn't as consistent as previous seasons. But previous seasons were, in my opinion, consistently safe and consistently unchallenging and less ambitious (even though I like all of the previous seasons too). Season 4 for me is when Angel lifted itself from merely good television to great must-see television.

I tend to rate seasons as better (of any television show) when they are daring and try challenging things (and, of course, have some success in doing so). I'd much rather watch a challenging and ambitious season with 14-15 great episodes and 8 or so average or spectacular failures than 22 episodes of good-but-seen-it-all-before-nothing-truly-special types of seasons. Which is what Angel Seasons 1-3 are to me on the whole, sorry. Merely good.

Season 4's story-arc is fascinating, compelling, complex, and attempts to engage a broad variety of issues and ideas. In large part, I think it succeeds. My biggest complaint was how I kind of lost the thread and connection a little bit when the story transitioned from the Beast's master to when it took over Cordelia and then to Jasmine. I think the thread (specifically the change/evolution of the main villain/big bad) kind of got lost a little bit there. There were some questions I had regarding this that seemed to be overlooked or maybe just passed over. That really is my main criticism though. I just got done saying in the last paragraph that I value inconsistent but more ambitious, challenging and interesting seasons versus consistent but less groundbreaking and less ambitious ones, which is absolutely true, but actually Angel Season 4 isn't really that inconsistent to me either, when I think about it. Some of the early episodes like The House Always Wins were good but definitely nothing special (and in this sense they resemble to me the typical S1-3 Angel episode). The worst episode was probably Supersymmetry: but to me this episode feels distinctly worse because it stands side by side with such tremendous and noteworthy company among the many other S4 episodes.

Connor? I don't really like him as much as everyone else on the show but I get him. I get why he is the way he is. And I'm not sure us liking him is the point about Connor either. Common, Connor is not meant to be likable, how many people would really like a one-note morose guy like Connor in real life? And of course the writers of the show new this. They made him anyway, to emphasize certain points about Angel, the plot that brought him into the show and its later developments, etc. I don't believe that the writers wanted us to sympathize with him necessarily either (and people who say this usually add that they failed to make us sympathetic with Connor, because he's so annoying, and therefore the writers failed with Connor, etc). I don't think it was ever as simple as wanting the audience to find Connor sympathetic. I think Connor is more complicated than that, he inhabits a lot of gray area, and I think it was more the point about Connor to get the audience to think and consider some different things (in regard to who he was, his circumstances, ANGEL, etc.). So I don't believe that Connor's lack of likeability is an objection to the Connor idea. I see that as completely beside the point. His lack of emotional versatility is likewise beside the point to me too. A guy with Connor's experiences just isn't going to have much emotional range. Besides, other characters are more or less just as limited. Take Wesley: he rarely exhibits broad emotional range either. But we like Wesley as a person, so we dismiss it or don't notice it.

I could go on, but since the thread was about what the negativity about S4 was, I'll stop right here. I just thought I'd add a few quick opinions in defense of a stellar season IMO.

 

[Robb Stark]

I tend to rate seasons as better (of any television show) when they are daring and try challenging things (and, of course, have some success in doing so). I'd much rather watch a challenging and ambitious season with 14-15 great episodes and 8 or so average or spectacular failures than 22 episodes of good-but-seen-it-all-before-nothing-truly-special types of seasons. Which is what Angel Seasons 1-3 are to me on the whole, sorry. Merely good.

Now, this I don't quite understand. I found it to be the complete opposite (which I guess lends to what you were saying about people seeing the same thing so differently). I found the S2 arc with Angel firing his team and in pursuit of Darla to be incredibly interesting. The turn with Wesley in S3 was something I didn't see coming at all. They took a safe, reliable and largely comedic character and completely turned him on his head, with an amazing effect. I thought those two central arcs those years challenged the show, successfully I might add, far more than S4 did.

 

[thetopher]

I tend to think both Buffy and Angel took lots of riskd all the damn time.
But on Angel it was usually darker-edged risks, and not all of them paid off.
For example: In S2 the stakes are personel; Angel going grim and dark was genius, gave us some awesome moments and on the other hand we saw Wes, Gunn and Cordy develop on their own and really form a bond.
But we also have the 'epic' Pylea trilogy, which took up a whole lot of screen time and was also a risk, that I loathe with a passion. No stakes, crappy baddies, trying too hard to be funny and failing (mostly). Ugh. 😡
At least we get Fred out of it. Silver lining there.

Then in S4 it took different kinds of risks, the scope was epic, the arc was big dark and and convoluted but on the whole I think it really worked. From about 'Apocalypes Nowish' to 'Inside Out' it was really gripping stuff, (and has some of my favourite Angel eps ever in there.) afterwards it kinda falls apart imo.
But a lot of the more 'personel choice/character' risks suck. The whole Cordelia/Conner thing was icky, Conner was one note and annoying, Charisma Carpenter phoning in her performance made her a terrible badguy, and then the whole Jasmine thing...are we really supposed to have any sympathy for this 'higher power' or any doubt that the Angel team didn't do the right thing.
The whole personal 'did we do the right thing' is so forced. And Angel even offers her a f***ing job, the woman who brainwashed/hijacked his girl, and pretty much destroyed her and his son. Urg. 😡

So, yeah, I guess not all risks pay off. When they're good they're good. 🙂